I'm a technology, privacy, and information security reporter and most recently the author of the book This Machine Kills Secrets, a chronicle of the history and future of information leaks, from the Pentagon Papers to WikiLeaks and beyond.
I've covered the hacker beat for Forbes since 2007, with frequent detours into digital miscellania like switches, servers, supercomputers, search, e-books, online censorship, robots, and China. My favorite stories are the ones where non-fiction resembles science fiction. My favorite sources usually have the word "research" in their titles.
Since I joined Forbes, this job has taken me from an autonomous car race in the California desert all the way to Beijing, where I wrote the first English-language cover story on the Chinese search billionaire Robin Li for Forbes Asia. Black hats, white hats, cyborgs, cyberspies, idiot savants and even CEOs are welcome to email me at agreenberg (at) forbes.com. My PGP public key can be found here.

Anonymous Hackers Target Alleged WikiLeaker Bradley Manning's Jailers

As army private Bradley Manning suffers for his alleged megaleak of secret documents to WikiLeaks, one group of hackers seems determined to make sure that others feel his pain.

Over the weekend, the loose hacker collective Anonymous declared that it will go on the offensive against those who are currently detaining Manning in a Quantico military brig, keeping him in solitary confinement and forcing him to strip nightly and stand at attention naked each morning.

In a crowdsourced document used to coordinate the group’s actions, Anonymous hackers name Department of Defense Press Secretary Geoff Morell and chief warrant officer Denise Barnes as targets and call on members to dig up personal information on both, including phone numbers, personal histories and home addresses. The goal of the operation, for now, is to “dox” the two officials, the typical Anonymous method of publishing personal information of victims and using it for mass harassment.

“Targets established,” reads the document, before naming Morell and Barnes. “We’re in the ruining business. And business is good.”

The group, which is calling its attack “Operation Bradical,” also lists demands as follows:

“Manning must be given sheets, blankets, any religious texts he desires, adequate reading material, clothes, and a ball. One week. Otherwise, we continue to dox and ruin those responsible for keeeping him naked, without bedding, without any of the basic amenities that were provided even to captured Nazis in WWII.”

One member of Anonymous, who tells me he’s not associated with the action, says that doxing will likely include “ruin life tactics” such as “ordering them pizza, sending them thousands of boxes, reporting them to police for drug abuse, sex offenders list, tricking their ISPs into canceling the Internet, messing with their social security numbers, false flag, fax harassment, phone harassment, email bombing, subscriptions to magazines, diapers, tampons.”

Nasty as they may be, those tactics seem relatively harmless in comparison to the attack that Anonymous recently launched against the security firm HBGary Federal in retaliation for one executive’s threats to unmask leaders of the hacker group. HBGary Federal chief executive Aaron Barr had his email archive hacked and published online along with that of his colleagues. HBGary Federal’s website was defaced and Barr’s Twitter account hijacked. After a series of scandals were revealed in the company’s published emails including a plan to launch cyberattacks and misinformation campaigns against WikiLeaks, Barr resigned last week.

Anonymous spokesperson Barrett Brown told the Tech Herald that harassment of Quantico officials will be just the first step in a “media war” against those detaining Manning. “Manning is an absolute hero,” Brown told the news site. “If this means me going to fucking prison, then that’s fine.”

Last week Manning was hit with 22 charges for his alleged role in a massive leak of classified information to WikiLeaks, including a charge of “aiding the enemy” that can carry a penalty of death. Since those charges were filed, Manning has been forced to strip naked nightly in a tactic that Quantico officials say is legal and aims to prevent suicide attempts, but others claim is designed to degrade and punish the young private. According to Manning’s lawyer David Coombs, Quantico officials have declined to state their full reasons for Manning’s stripping publicly to avoid “a violation of PFC Manning’s privacy.”

“The Brig’s treatment of PFC Manning is shameful,” Coombs wrote in a statement Saturday. “It is made even more so by the Brig hiding behind concerns for ‘[PFC] Manning’s privacy.’ There is no justification, and there can be no justification, for treating a detainee in this degrading and humiliating manner.”

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As can be read in the following article – the treatment of America’s foremost political prisoner is outright torture!!: http://bit.ly/aYcbD It is time for a new UN Resolution against torture that stops these (ineffective) torture methods!!!

“Anonymous” isn’t an organization; it is a title used many people (including some hackers) who have little or no contact with each other. Therefore “Anonymous” cannot have a spokesman and, even if it could, there would be no way to verify that the person claiming to be the spokesman is actually the spokesman.

With that said, wherever the statement came from, it is a good statement. If Bradley really was the one who revealed the truth through Wikileaks, he is indeed a hero. He revealed that innocent men, women and children were secretly being murdered in the name of the American people. For that he deserves a medal, not solitary confinement and legal prosecution.

“Military Justice is to justice what military music is to music”. When an individual joins the armed forces, that person signs away many constitutional rights. With that said Article 13 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice says that punishment other than arrest and confinement is prohibited before trial, under conditions no more rigorous than necessary to ensure that the accused soldier is present at the trial.

“I find it curious that they specified religious texts. Why not all texts, period?”

Probably because prisoners are traditionally allowed one religious text (if they want one) even if reading materials are generally not allowed. It’s kind of pointing out that even Manning’s basic human rights allotted to the worst of the worst criminals are being denied him. It’s unlikely Manning will be allowed any other kind of reading material in the current climate he has been placed in. Of course, there is much more about that that should be changed and we’ll get to that in due time. First things first, I think, is the best way to go.

In situations where hacking is carried out by Anonymous it should correctly be written “Hackers within Anonymous…” not “Anonymous, the hacking group”.

In such a large group, a small handful are involved in hacking, the vast majority are not, either because they don’t have the technical skills, or don’t have the inclination/belief that it’s the correct course of action to take.

Also, denial of service attacks are not hacking as no security is circumvented.

There are many people claiming, and many reasons why people claim to belong to Anonymous—not all of them should be automatically associated with computer hacking—an illegal activity.

Please, major news publications at least should do the *basic* research on the group before writing about them:

I find It hard to believe that this traitor deserves any pity what so ever!!!If 1 American life is compromised he should be executed on the Whitehouse Lawn!!!He should have thought about the consequences when he blatently put our country in harms way!! He took an oath to defend it, from all enemys foreign and domestic. I can’t see anything but Failure on his part.FRY EM!!!!!!!!!!!!